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Scott Redding says he won’t miss the “atmosphere” and “the general attitude” of MotoGP after he departs for a move into British Superbikes.
Redding has been part of the grand prix racing paddock since 2008, and has spent the past five campaigns in MotoGP.
But he will lose his seat at Aprilia next year when Andrea Iannone takes over his ride.
Ahead of his final scheduled outing in MotoGP in Valencia, Redding insisted he was not upset to be leaving, in part because he was confident of a “brighter future ahead”.
He added: “There’s been a lot of good memories [here] that I smile about, and the times I’ve had here, they’ve been great.
“But it’s nothing that’s going to trouble me, I’m not going to go ‘oh fucking hell, I’m going to miss that’.
“You know, I don’t really like the whole atmosphere of this place at the moment as it is.
“The fans have been great, I can communicate with them so good, that’s more important to me at this moment.”
Asked to elaborate on what made MotoGP’s atmosphere unappealing to him, Redding said it was “just the general attitude from a lot of people here”.
The 25-year-old, who is moving onto a Paul Bird Motorsport-run Ducati in British Superbikes, then criticised his MotoGP peers for “closing themselves off”.
“It’s not my thing, it’s the thing that I lost the love for here. Whereas in British Superbikes, it’s just so much more raw. I was watching some races back and I’m like ‘get me there’.
“You see them banging [handle]bars – yeah, they have a little complaint rider to rider, fair enough, face to face, ‘you’re a dickhead’ – ‘you’re a dickhead’, sound, we go for the next race.
“Here, they [the riders] don’t even say anything to each other, I don’t know if they’re scared of each other or they don’t know what they should say. You know what I mean? It’s not like racing.
“And that’s what I miss, and I feel they should think to try and get that back a little bit.
“Like, so many of my fans are my fans for me, not for my result. They don’t even comment about my result because my result is shit.
“But they say ‘you bring so much more fun, feeling, charisma, to the paddock – we like that. We would like more people [like that]’.
“Marc [Marquez], he’s going a bit that way, which is good, I like to see that. And it would be good for the sport.
“Instead of people closing themselves off, not wanting to see people, don’t want to do this, can’t be seen, [it’s] ‘I’ve got to have a fucking entourage of 20 people around me’.
“You know, what is that? We’re humans. I came in now on a Ryanair flight with normal people. I didn’t see anyone else there, you know what I mean?”
Redding has endured a difficult campaign with Aprilia, but hopes that the rain forecast for the Valencia weekend – coupled with a new engine being made available to him – could allow him to leave MotoGP on a high.
“I would like to finish with a good result. If it rains all weekend, I’ve already said to the guys – it’s all-in or it’s all-out. Every session. I have nothing to lose.
“What’s the worst that can happen, I’m going to crash? Well, big deal. My target – I want to just show something here. It’s my chance.”